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From The Tribes And Castes Of The Central Provinces Of India

By R. V. Russell

Of The Indian Civil Service

Superintendent Of Ethnography, Central Provinces

Assisted By Rai Bahadur Hira Lal, Extra Assistant Commissioner

Macmillan And Co., Limited, London, 1916.

NOTE 1: The 'Central Provinces' have since been renamed Madhya Pradesh.

NOTE 2: While reading please keep in mind that all articles in this series have been scanned from the original book. Therefore, footnotes have got inserted into the main text of the article, interrupting the flow. Readers who spot these footnotes gone astray might like to shift them to their correct place.

Kasai

Kasai, Kassab

The caste of Muhammadan butchers, of whom about 4000 persons were returned from the Central Provinces and Berar in 191 1. During the last decade the numbers of the caste have very greatly increased owing to the rise of the cattle-slaughtering industry. Two kinds of Kasais may be distinguished, the Gai Kasai or cow-killers and the Bakar Kasai or mutton butchers. The latter, how- ever, are usually (Hindus and have been formed into a separate caste, being known as Khatlk. Like other Muham- madans who have adopted professions of a not too reputable nature, the Kasais have become a caste, partly because the ordinary Muhammadan declines to intermarry with them, and partly no doubt in imitation of the Hindu social system. The Kasais are one of the lowest of the Muhammadan castes, and will admit into their community even low-caste Hindu converts. They celebrate their weddings by the nikah form, but until recently many Hindu rites were added

part ii to it. The Kazi is employed to conduct the marriage, but if his services are not available a member of the caste may officiate instead. Polygamy is permitted to the number of four wives. A man may divorce his wife simply for dis- obedience, but if a woman wishes to divorce her husband she must forego the Meher or dowry promised at the time of the wedding.

The Kasai women, perhaps owing to their meat diet, are noticeably strong and well nourished, and there is a saying to the effect that, ' The butcher's daughter will bear children when she is ten years old.' The deities of the Kasais are a number of Muhammadan saints, who are known as Aulia or Favourites of God. The caste bury the dead, and on the third day they read the Kalma over some parched grain and distribute this to the caste-fellows, who eat it in the name of the deceased man, invoking a blessing upon him.

On the ninth day after the death they distribute food to Muhammadan Fakirs or beggars, and on the twentieth and fortieth days two more -feasts are given to the caste and a third on the anniversary of the death. Owing to what is considered the degrading nature of his occupation, the social position of the Kasai is very low, and there is a saying — Na dekha ho bagh, to dekh belaij Na dekha ho Thag, to dekh Kasai) or, ' If you have not seen a tiger, look at a cat ; and if you have not seen a Thug, look at a butcher.' Many Hindus have a superstition that leprosy is developed by the continual eating of beef. In recent years an extensive industry in the slaughter of 2. The cattle has sprung up all over the Province. Worn-out cfttle; r 11 slaughter- animals are now eagerly bought up and killed ; their hides ing are dried and exported, and the meat is cured and sent to llKlustlT- Madras and Burma, a substantial profit being obtained from its sale. The blood, horns and hoofs are other products which yield a return.

The religious scruples of the Hindus have given way to the temptation of obtaining what is to them a substantial sum for a valueless animal, and, with the exception perhaps of Brahmans and Banias, all castes now dispose of their useless cattle to the butchers. At first this

was done by stealth, and efforts were made to impose severe penalties on anybody guilty of the crime of being accessory to the death of the sacred kine, while it is said that the emissaries of the butchers were sent to the markets disguised as Brahmans or religious mendicants, and pretended that they wished to buy cattle in order to preserve their lives as a meritorious act. But such attempts at restriction have generally proved fruitless, and the trade is now openly prac- tised and acquiesced in by public opinion.

In spite of many complaints of the shortage of plough cattle caused by the large numbers of animals slaughtered, the results of this traffic are probably almost wholly advantageous ; for the villages no longer contain a horde of worn-out and decrepit animals to deprive the valuable plough and milch cattle of a share of the too scanty pasturage. Kasais themselves are generally prosperous. 3. Muham- When killing an animal the butcher lays it on the ground S«S/ lte with its feet to the west and head stretched towards the or Midi, north and then cuts its throat saying : In the name of God ; God is great. This method of killing an animal is known as zibali.

The Muhammadan belief that an animal is not fit for food unless its throat has been cut so that the blood flows on to the ground is thus explained in Professor Robertson Smith's Religion of the Semites 1 : " In heathen Canaan all the animals belonged to the god of the country ; but it was lawful to kill them if payment was made to the god by pouring out their life or blood on the ground." The Arabs are of the same Semitic stock, and this may be partly the underlying idea of their rite of zibah. It seems doubtful, however, whether the explanation suffices to explain its continuance for so long a period among the Muhammadans who have long ceased to reverence any earth-deity, and in a foreign country where the soil cannot be sacred to them ; and a short summary of Dr. Robertson Smith's luminous explana- tion of the underlying principle of animal sacrifice in early times seems requisite to its full understanding.

1 (London, A. & C. Black.) ii ANIMISM 349 Primitive man did not recognise any difference of in- 4- Anim- telligence and self- consciousness between himself and the lb lower animals and even plants, but believed them all to be possessed of consciousness and volition as he was. He knew of no natural laws of the constitution of matter and the action of forces, and therefore thought that all natural phenomena, the sun, moon and stars, the wind and rain, were similarly appearances, manifestations or acts of volition of beings conscious like himself.

This is what is meant by animism. Among several races the community was divided into totem-clans, and each clan held sacred some animal or bird, which was considered as a kinsman. All the members of the clan were kin to each other through the tie formed by their eating their totem animal, which in the hunting stage was probably their chief means of subsistence, and from which they consequently thought that they derived their common life. 1 In process of time the animals which were domesticated, such as the horse, the sheep, the cow and the camel, acquired a special sanctity, and became, in fact, the principal deities of the community, such as the calf-god Apis, the cow-goddess Isis-Hathor, and the ram- god Amen in Egypt, Hera, probably a cow-goddess, and Dionysus, who may be the deified bull or goat (or a com- bination of them) in Greece, and so on.

It is easy to see how these domestic animals would 5. Animal- overshadow all others in importance when the tribe had s°ds ~ , rhe r domestic arrived at the pastoral or agricultural stage ; thus in the animals, former the camel, horse, goat or sheep, and in the latter pre-eminently the bull and cow, as the animals which afforded subsistence to the whole tribe, would become their 1 This definition of totemism is more the clan come to think that they are or less in accord with that held by the descended from their totem animal and late Professor Robertson Smith, but is that the spirits of their ancestors pass not generally accepted.

The exhaustive into the totem animal. When this collection of totemic beliefs and customs belief arises, they cease eating the contained in Sir J. G. Frazer's Totem- totem as a mark of veneration and ism and Exogamy affords, however, respect, and abstain from killing or substantial evidence in favour of it injuring it. Finally the totem comes among tribes still in the hunting stage to be little more than a clan-name or in Australia, North America and Africa. family name, which serves the purpose The Indian form of totemism is, in the of preventing marriage between persons writer's opinion, a later one, arising related through males, who Relieve when the totem animal has ceased to themselves to be descended from a be the main source of life, and when common ancestor.

greatest gods. It must be presumed that men forgot that their ancestors had tamed these animals, and looked on them as divine helpers who of their own free will had come to give mankind their aid in gaining a subsistence. Those who have observed the reverence paid to the cow and bull in India will have no difficulty in realising this point of view. Many other instances can be obtained.

Thus in the Vedic religion of the Aryans the Ashvins, from ashva, a horse, were the divine horsemen of the dawn or of the sun. The principal sacrifice was that of the horse, con- sidered, perhaps, as the representative of the sun or carrier of celestial fire. In a hymn the horse is said to be sprung from the gods. In Greece Phaethon was the charioteer of the horses of the sun. Mars, as the Roman god of war, may perhaps have been the deified horse, as suggested later. The chieftains of the Anglo-Saxon invaders of England, Hengist and Horsa, were held to be descended from the god Odin, to whom horses were sacrificed ; Hengist means a stallion and Horsa a horse, the word having survived in modern English. Other mythical kings in Bede's chronicle have names derived from that of the horse (vicg.)}

The camel does not seem to have become an anthropomorphic god, but the Arabs venerated it and refrained from killing it except as a sacrifice, when it was offered to the Morning- Star and partaken of sacramentally by the worshippers as will be seen subsequently. The ox as the tiller of the ground, with the cow as milk-giver and mother of the ox, are especially venerated by races in the early agricultural stage. Egyptian and Greek instances have already been given. In modern Egypt, as in India, bulls are let loose and held sacred. " Sometimes a peasant vows that he will sacrifice, for the sake of a saint, a calf which he possesses, as soon as it is full grown and fatted. It is let loose, by consent of all his neighbours, to pasture where it will, even in fields of young wheat ; and at last, after it has been sacrificed, a public feast is made with its meat.

Many a large bull is thus given away." 2 Dionysus Zagreus was a young bull devoured by the Titans, whom Zeus raised again 1 Orpheus (Heinemann), p. 197. 2 Lane, Modern Egyptians, p. 248. ii • ANIMAL-GODS 351 to a glorious life. 1 The Babylonians had a bull-god, Ninit.2 Brazen images of bulls were placed in Babylonian temples. The Parsis hold the bull sacred, and a child is made to drink a bull's urine as a rite of purification. After a funeral the mourners free themselves from the impurity caused by contact with the dead in a similar manner.3 The mono- theistic religion of Persia, Mitraism, which was an outcome of the faith of Zoroaster, and being introduced 'by the Emperors Commodus and Julian into the Roman world contended for some time with Christianity, was apparently sun-worship, Mitra being the sun-god of the ancient Aryans and Iranians ; M. Reinach says : " Mitra is born from a rock ; he makes water flow from the rock by striking it with an arrow, makes an alliance with the sun, and enters into a struggle with a bull, whom he conquers and sacrifices.

The sacrifice of the bull appears to indicate that the worship of Mitra in its most ancient form was that of a sacred bull, conjoined to or representing the sun, which was sacrificed as a god, and its flesh and blood eaten in a sacrificial meal. Mitra, the slayer of the bull, figures in a double role as one finds in all the religions which have passed from totemism to anthropomorphism." 4 In Scandinavia the god Odin and his brothers were the grandsons of a divine cow, born from the melting ice in the region of snow and dark- ness. 5 In Rome a white bull was sacrificed to the Feriae Latinae, apparently the spirit of the Latin holy days, and distributed among all the towns of Latium.6 Altars of the ancient Celts or Gauls have been found in France carved with the image of a bull.7 In Palestine there is the familiar instance of the golden calf.

In the open court of Solomon's temple stood the brazen sea on twelve oxen, and figures of lions, oxen and cherubim covered the portable tanks.8 The veneration of the bull survived into Christian England in the Middle Ages. " At St. Edmundsbury a white bull, which enjoyed full ease and plenty in the fields, and was never yoked to the plough nor employed in any service, was 1 Orphhis, p. 47. 5 Ibidem, p. 204. 2 Ibidem, p. 50. ° Ibidem, p. 144. s E.G. Parsis of Gujarat, pp. 232, 7 Ibidem, p. 169. 241. 8 D. M. Flinders- Petrie, Egypt and 4 Orpheus, pp. 1 01, 102. Israel, p. 61. 352 KASAI led in procession in the chief streets of the town to the principal gate of the monastery, attended by all the monks singing and a shouting crowd. 1 " Such remedies as cowdung and cow's urine have been used on the continent of Europe by peasant physicians down to our times " ; 2 and the belief in their efficacy must apparently have arisen from the sanctity attaching to the animal.

In India Siva rides upon the bull Nandi, and when the Kunbis were too weak from famine to plough the fields, he had Nandi castrated and harnessed to the plough, thus teaching them to use oxen for ploughing ; the image of Nandi is always carved in stone in front of Siva, and there seems little reason to doubt that in his beneficent aspect of Mahadeo the god was originally the deified bull. Bulls were let loose in his honour and allowed to graze where they would, and formerly a good Hindu would not even sell a bull, though this rule has fallen into abeyance. The sacred cow, Kamdhenu, was the giver of all wealth in Hindu mythology, and Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, is considered to have been the deified cow. Hindus are purified from grave offences by drinking the five products of the sacred cow, milk, curds, butter, dung and urine ; and the floors of Hindu houses are daily plastered with cowdung to the same end. Of the exaltation of minor animals into anthropomorphic gods and goddesses only a few instances need be given. As is shown by Sir J. G. Frazer, Demeter and Proserpine probably both represent the deified pig. 3 " The Greek drama has arisen from the celebrations of Dionysus. In the beginning the people sacrificed a goat totem-god, that is to say, Dionysus himself ; they wept for his death and then celebrated his resurrection with transports of joy." 4 And again M. Reinach states : " There are more than mere vestiges of totemism in ancient Greece.

We may take first the attendant animals of the gods, the eagle of Zeus, the owl of Athena, the fawn of Artemis, the dolphin of Poseidon, the dove of Aphrodite and so on ; the sacred animal can develop into the companion of the god, but also into his enemy or 1 Gomme, Folk-lore as a Historical 3 Golden Bough, ii. pp. 299-301. Science, p. 161. See article on Kumhar. 2 Haug's Essays on the Parsis, p. 286. 4 Orpheus, p. 139. ii OTHER ANIMALS 353 victim ; thus Apollo Sauroctonos is, as the epithet shows, a killer of lizards ; but in the beginning it was the lizard itself which was divine. We have seen that the boar before becoming the slayer of Adonis had been Adonis himself." l In early Rome "The wolf was the animal most venerated. Its association with Mars, as the sacrifice most pleasing to him, leaves no doubt as to the primitive nature of the god.

It was a wolf which acted as guide to the Samnites in their search for a place to settle in, and these Samnites called themselves Hirpi or Hirpini, that is to say, wolves. Romulus and Remus, sons of the wolf Mars and the she-wolf Silvia (the forest-dweller), are suckled by a she-wolf." 2 It seems possible that Mars as the deified wolf was at first an agri- cultural deity, the wolf being worshipped by the shepherd and farmer because he was their principal enemy, as the sambhar stag and the wild buffalo are similarly venerated by Indian cultivators. At a later period, in becoming the god of war, he may have represented the deified horse as well. Races of war-horses were held at his festivals on 14th March and 27th February, and a great race on the Ides of October when the winner was solemnly slain. 3 " In Egypt the baboon was regarded as the emblem of Tahuti, the god of wisdom ; the serious expression and human ways of the large baboons are an obvious cause for their being regarded as the wisest of animals.

Tahuti is represented as a baboon from the earliest dynasty down to late times ; and four baboons were sacred in his temple at Heliopolis." 4 " The hippopotamus was the goddess Ta-urt, ' the great one,' the patroness of pregnancy, who is never shown in any other form. Rarely this animal appears as the emblem df the god Set. The jackal haunted the cemeteries on the edge of the desert, and so came to be taken as the guardian of the dead and identified with Anubis, the god of departing souls. The vulture was the emblem of maternity as being supposed to care especially for her young. Hence she is identified with Mut, the mother-goddess of Thebes. The cobra serpent was sacred from the earliest times to the 1 Orphhis, pp. 119, 120. 4 Religions, Ancient and Modern, 2 Ibidem, p. 144. Ancient Egypt, Professor Flinders- 3 Religions, Ancient and Modern, Petrie, p. 22. Ancient Rome, Cyril Bailey, p. 86. VOL. Ill 2 A

KASAI present day. It was never identified with any of the great deities, but three goddesses appear in serpent form." ] 7 . Animals Finally, in India we have Hanuman, originally the worshipped deified ape, about whose identity there can be no doubt as he still retains his monkey's tail in all sculpture. Bhairon, the watchman of Mahadeo's temples, rides on a black dog, and was perhaps originally the watch-dog, or in his more terrible character of the devourer of human beings, the wolf.

Ganesh or Ganpati has the head of an elephant and rides on a rat and appears to have derived his divine attributes from both these animals, as will be explained elsewhere ; 2 Kartikeya, the god of war, rides on a peacock, and as the peacock is sacred, he may originally have been that bird, perhaps because its plumes were a favourite war emblem. Among his epithets are Sarabhu, born in the thicket, Dwada- sakara and Dwadasaksha, twelve-handed and twelve-eyed. He was fostered by the maidens who make the Pleiades, and his epithet of twelve-eyed may be taken from the eyes in the peacock's feathers. 3 But, like the Greek gods, the Hindu gods have now long become anthropomorphic, and only vestiges remain of their animal associations. Enough has been said to show that most of the pantheons are largely occupied by deified animals and birds. 8. The The original sacrifice was that in which the community sacrificial Qf kjnsmen ate together the flesh of their divine or totem meal. ° animal-god and drank its blood. In early religion the tribal god was the ancestor and relative of the tribe.

He protected and fostered the tribe in its public concerns, but took no special care of individuals ; the only offences of which he took cognisance were those against the tribe as a whole, such as shedding a kinsman's blood. At periodical intervals the tribe renewed their kinship with the god and each other by eating his flesh together at a sacrificial meal by which they acquired his divine attributes ; and every tribesman was not only invited, but bound, to participate.

" According to antique ideas those who eat and drink together are by this very act tied to one another by a bond of friendship 1 Religions, Ancient and Modern, 2 Vide article on Bania. Ancient Egypt, Professor Flinders- 3 Dowson's and Garrett's Classical Petrie, pp. 24, 26. Dictionaries, art. Kartikeya.

and mutual obligation. Hence when we find that in ancient religions all the ordinary functions of worship are summed up in the sacrificial meal, and that the ordinary intercourse between gods and men has no other form, we are to remember that the act of eating and drinking together is the solemn and stated expression of the fact that all who share the meal are brethren, and that the duties of friend- ship and brotherhood are implicitly acknowledged in their common act. 1 The one thing directly expressed in the sacrificial meal is that the god and his worshippers are commensals, but every other point in their mutual relations is included in what this involves.

Those who sit at meat together are united for all social effects ; those who do not eat together are aliens to one another, without fellowship in religion and without reciprocal social duties. The extent to which this view prevailed among the ancient Semites, and still prevails among the Arabs, may be brought out most clearly by reference to the law of hospitality. Among the Arabs every stranger whom one meets in the desert is a natural enemy, and has no protection against violence except his own strong hand or the fear that his tribe will avenge him if his blood be spilt. But if I have eaten the smallest morsel of food with a man I have nothing further to fear from him ; ' there is salt between us,' and he is bound not only to do me no harm, but to help and defend me as if I were his brother. So far was this principle carried by the old Arabs that Zaid-al-Khail, a famous warrior in the days of Muhammad, refused to slay a vagabond who carried off his camels, because the thief had surreptitiously drunk from his father's milk-bowl before committing the theft." 2 It is in this idea that the feeling of hospitality originally arose.

Those who ate together the sacred food consisting of the body of the god were brothers, and bound to assist each other and do each other no harm ; and the obligation extended in a modified form to all food partaken of together, more especially as with some races, as the ancient Romans and the Hindus, all the regular household meals are sacred

they may only be partaken of after purifying the body, and

a portion of the food at each meal is offered to the gods. 1 Religion of the Semites, p. 265. 2 Ibidem, pp. 269, 270. of kinship. 356 KASAI part " There was a sworn alliance between the Lihyan and the Mostalic—they were wont to eat and drink together. This phrase of an Arab narratpr supplies exactly what is wanted to define the significance of the sacrificial meal. The god and his worshippers are wont to eat and drink together, and by this token their fellowship is declared and sealed." : 9 . Primi- The primitive idea of kinship rested on this participation tive basis j n t iie sacrificial meal, and not on blood-relationship. "In ancient times the fundamental obligations of kinship had nothing to do with degrees of relationship, but rested with absolute and identical force or every member of the clan.

To know that a man's life was sacred to me and that every blood-feud that touched him involved me also, it was not necessary for me to count cousinship with him by reckoning up to our common ancestor ; it was enough that we belonged to the same clan and bore the same clan-name. What was my clan was determined by customary law, which was not the same in all stages of society ; in the earliest Semitic communities a man was of his mother's clan, in later times he belonged to the clan of his father. But the essential idea of kinship was independent of the particular form of the law.

A kin was a group of persons whose lives were so bound up together, in what must be called a physical unity, that they could be treated as parts of one common life. The members of one kindred looked on themselves as one living whole, a single animated mass of blood, flesh, and bones, of which no member could be touched without all the members suffering. This point of view is expressed in the Semitic tongues in many familiar forms of speech. In case of homicide Arabian tribesmen do not say,

' The blood of M or N has been spilt,' naming the man ; they say, ' Our blood has been spilt.' In Hebrew the phrase by which one claims kinship is, ' I am your bone and your flesh.' Both in Hebrew and in Arabic ' flesh ' is synonymous with ' clan ' or kindred group." 2 Similarly in India a Hindu speaks of any member of his subcaste or clan as his bhai or brother. " Indeed, in a religion based on kinship, where the god and his worshippers are of one stock, the principle of sanctity

n THE BOND OF FOOD—THE BLOOD-FEUD 357 and that of kinship are identical. The sanctity of a kinsman's life and the sanctity of the godhead are not two things but one ; for ultimately the only thing which is sacred is the common tribal life or the common blood which is identified with the life.

Whatever being partakes in this life is holy, and its holiness may be described indifferently as participation in the divine life and nature, or as participa- tion in the kindred blood." 1 " At a later period the conception is found current that 10. The any food which two men partake of together, so that the ^°°? of same substance enters into their flesh and blood, is enough to establish some sacred unity of life between them ; but in ancient times this significance seems to be always attached to participation in the flesh of a sacrosanct victim, and the solemn mystery of its death is justified by the consideration that only in this way can the sacred cement be procured which creates or keeps alive a living bond of union between the worshippers and their god.

This cement is nothing less than the actual life of the sacred and kindred animal, which is conceived as residing in its flesh, but especially in its blood, and so, in the sacred meal, is actually distributed among all the participants, each of whom incorporated a particle of it with his own individual life." 2 It thus appears that the sacrifice of the divine animal u. The which was the god of the tribe or clan, and the eating of its blood - feud - flesh and drinking of its blood together, was the only tangible bond or obligation on which such law and morality as existed in primitive society was based.

Those who participated in this sacrifice were brothers and forbidden to shed each other's blood, because in so doing they would have spilt the blood of the god impiously and unlawfully ; the only lawful occasion on which it could be shed being by participation of all the clan or kinsmen in the sacrificial meal. All other persons outside the clan were strangers or enemies, and no rights or obligations existed in connection with them ; the only restraint on killing them being the fear that their kinsmen would take blood-revenge, not solely on the murderer, but on any member of his clan.

A man's life was protected only by this readiness of his clansmen to avenge him ; if he 1 Religion of the Semites, p. 289. - Ibidem, p. 313. 358 KASAI part slew a fellow-kinsman, thus shedding the blood of the god which flowed in the veins of every member, or committed an)' other great impiety against the god, he was outlawed, and henceforth there was no protection for his life except such as he could afford himself by his own strength. This reflection puts the importance of the blood-feud in primitive society in a clear light.

It was at that time really a bene- ficent institution, being the only protection for human life ; and its survival among such backward races as the Pathans and Corsicans, long after the State has undertaken the pro- tection and avenging of life and the blood-feud has become almost wholly useless and evil, is more easily understood. 12. Taking The original idea of the sacrificial meal was that the food to- kinsmen in concert partook of the body of the god, thereby gether and l . i hospitality, renewing their kinship with him and with each other.

By analogy, however, the tie thus formed was extended to the whole practice of eating together. It has been seen how a stranger who partook of food with an Arab became sacred and as a kinsman to his host and all the latter's clan for such time as any part of the food might remain in his system, a period which was conventionally taken as about three days. " The Old Testament records many cases where a covenant was sealed by the parties eating and drinking together. In most of these the meal is sacrificial, and the deity is taken in as a third party to the covenant. But in Joshua i. 14 the Israelites enter into alliance with the Gibeonites by tak- ing of their victuals without consulting Jehovah. A formal league confirmed by an oath follows, but by accepting the proffered food the Israelites are already committed to the alliance." 1 From the belief in the strength and sanctity of the tie formed by eating together the obligation of hospitality appears to be derived. And this is one of the few moral ideas which are more binding in primitive than in civilised society. 13. The " A good example of the clan sacrifice, in which a whole kinship periodically joins, is afforded by the Roman sacra gentilicia. As in primitive society no man can belong to more than one kindred, so among the Romans no one could share in the sacra of two gcntes—to do so was to confound 1 Religion of the Semites, p. 271. ii THE HINDU CASTE FEASTS 359 the ritual and contaminate the purity of the gens. The sacra consisted in common anniversary sacrifices, in which the clans- men honoured the gods of the clan, and after them the whole kin, living and dead, were brought together in the service." ' The intense importance thus attached to eating in I4 . The common on ceremonial occasions has a very familiar ring to Hindu ... T . . caste- ar.y one possessing some acquaintance with the Indian caste- feasts, system. The resemblance of the gotra or clan and the sub- caste to the Greek phratry and pliule and the Roman gens aid curia or tribe has been pointed out by M. Emile Senart ii Les Castes dans Vlnde. The origin of the subcaste or group, whose members eat together and intermarry, cannot oe discussed here. But it seems probable that the real bond vhich unites it is the capacity of its members to join in the ceremonial feasts at marriages, funerals, and the readmission of members temporarily excluded, which are of a type closely esembling and seemingly derived from the sacrificial meal. 3efore a wedding the ancestors of the family are formally hvited, and when the wedding-cakes are made they are offered to the ancestors and then partaken of by all rela- ives of the family as in the Roman sacra. In this case grain vould take the place of flesh as the sacrificial food among 1 people who no longer eat the flesh of animals. Thus Sir [. G. Frazer states : " At the close of the rice harvest in the East Indian island of Buro each clan (fenna) meets at a common sacramental meal, to which every member of the clan is bound to contribute a little of the new rice. This meal is called ' eating the soul of the rice,' a name which clearly indicates the sacramental character of the repast. Some of the rice is also set apart and offered to the spirits." Grain cooked with water is sacred food among the Hindus. The bride and bridegroom worship Gauri, perhaps a corn-goddess, and her son Ganesh, the god of prosperity and full granaries. It has been suggested that yellow is the propitious Hindu colour for weddings, because it is the colour of the corn. 3 At the wedding feast all the guests sit knee to knee touch- ing each other as a sign of their brotherhood. Sometimes the bride eats with the men in token of her inclusion in the 1 Religion of the Semites, p. 275. 2 Golden Bough, ii. p. 321. 3 Vide art. Kumhar.

brotherhood.

In most castes the feast cannot begin until all the guests have come, and every member of the subcaste who is not under the ban of exclusion must be invited. V. any considerable number of the guests wilfully abstain from attending it is an insult to the host and an implication tint his own position is doubtful. Other points of resemblance between the caste feast and the sacrificial meal will be dis- cussed elsewhere. 15. Sacri-

The sacrifice of the camel in Arabia, about the period of camel tne fourth century, is thus described : " The camel chosen as the victim is bound upon a rude altar of stones piled togethc, and when the leader of the band has thrice led the wor- shippers round the altar in a solemn procession accompanied with chants, he inflicts the first wound while the last words of the hymn are still upon the lips of the congregation, anc in all haste drinks of the blood that gushes forth. Forth with the whole company fall on the victim with their swords hacking off pieces of the quivering flesh and devouring then raw, with such wild haste that in the short interval betweer the rise of the day-star, which marked the hour for the service to begin, and the disappearance of its rays before the rising sun, the entire camel, body and bones, skin, blood and entrails, is wholly devoured." 1 In this case the camel was offered as a sacrifice tc Venus or the Morning Star, and it had to be devoured while the star was visible. But it is clear that the camel itself had been originally revered, because except for the sacrifice it was unlawful for the Arabs to kill the camel otherwise than as a last resort to save themselves from starvation.

" The ordinary sustenance of the Saracens was derived from pillage or from hunting and from the milk of their herds. Only when these supplies failed they fell back on the flesh of their camels, one of which was slain for each clan or for each group which habitually pitched their tents together — always a fraction of a clan—and the flesh was hastily de- voured by the kinsmen in dog-like fashion, half raw and merely softened over the fire." 2 In Bhopal it is stated that a camel is still sacrificed annually in perpetuation of the ancient rite. Hindus who keep camels revere them like 1 Religion of the Semites, p. 338. 2 Ibidem, p. 281.

1

other domestic animals. When one of my tent-camels had broken its leg by a fall and had to be killed, I asked the camelman, to whom the animal belonged, to shoot it ; but he positively refused, saying, ' How shall I kill him who gives me my bread ' ; and a Muhammadan orderly finally shot it.

The camel was devoured raw almost before the life had 16. The left the body, so that its divine life and blood might be Sacrifice absorbed by the worshippers. The obligation to devour the whole body perhaps rested on the belief that its slaughter otherwise than as a sacrifice was impious, and if any part of the body was left unconsumed the clan would incur the guilt of murder. Afterwards, when more civilised stomachs revolted against the practice of devouring the whole body, the bones were buried or burnt, and it is suggested that our word bonfire comes from bone-fire. 1 Primitive usage required the presence of every clansman, so that each might partici- pate in shedding the sacred blood. Neither the blood of the god nor of any of the kinsmen might be spilt by private violence, but only by consent of the kindred and the kindred god. Similarly in shedding the blood of a member of the kin all the others were required to share the responsibility, and this was the ancient Hebrew form of execution where the culprit was stoned by the whole congregation.2 M. Salomon Reinach gives the following explanation of 17.

Animal Greek myths in connection with the sacrificial meal : " The Q^g65 primitive sacrifice of the god, usually accompanied by the eating of the god in fellowship, was preserved in their religious rites, and when its meaning had been forgotten numerous legends were invented to account for it. In order to understand their origin it is necessary to remember that the primitive worshippers masqueraded as the god and took his name. As the object of the totem sacrifice is to make the participants like the god and confer his divinity on them, the faithful endeavoured to increase the resemblance by taking the name of the god and covering themselves with the skins of animals of his species.

Thus the Athenian damsels celebrating the worship of the bear Artemis dressed themselves in bear-skins and called themselves bears ; the 1 Dr. Jevons, Introduction to the History of Religion, p. 1 50. 2 Religion of the Semites, p. 285. 362 KASAI part Maenads who sacrificed the doe Penthea were clad in doe- skins. Even in the later rites the devotees of Bacchus called themselves Bacchantes. A whole series of legends can be interpreted as semi-rationalistic explanations of the sacrificial meal. Actaeon was really a great stag sacrificed by women devotees who called themselves the great hind and the little hinds ; he became the rash hunter who surprised Artemis at her bath, and was transformed into a stag and devoured by his own dogs.

The dogs are a euphemism ; in the early legend they were the human devotees of the sacred stag who tore him to pieces and devoured him with their bare teeth. These feasts of raw flesh survived in the secret religious cults of Greece long after uncooked meat had ceased to be consumed in ordinary life. Orpheus {ophretts, the haughty), who appears in art with the skin of a fox on his head, was originally a sacred fox devoured by the women of the fox totem-clan ; these women call themselves Bassarides in the legend, and bassareus is one of the old names of the fox. Zagreus is a son of Zeus and Persephone who trans- formed himself into a bull to escape from the Titans, excited against him by Hera ; the Titans, worshippers of the divine bull, killed and ate him ; Zagreus was invoked in his worship as the ' good bull,' and when Zagreus by the grace of Zeus was reborn as Dionysus, the young god carried on his fore- head the horns which bore witness to his animal nature.

Hippolytus in the fable is the son of Theseus who repels the advances of Phaedra, his stepmother, and was killed by his runaway horses because Theseus, deceived by Phaedra, invoked the anger of a god upon him. But Hippolytus in Greek means ' One torn to pieces by horses.' Hippolytus is himself a horse whom the worshippers of the horse, calling themselves horses and disguised as such, tore to pieces and devoured. Phaethon (The Shining One) is a son of Apollo, who demands leave to drive the chariot of the sun, drives it badly, nearly burns up the world, and finally falls and perishes in the sea.

This legend is the product of an old rite at Rhodes, the island of the sun, where every year a white horse and a burning chariot were thrown into the sea to help the sun, fatigued by his labours." x 1 Orphans, pp. 123, 125. II THE PASSOVER 363 M. Reinach points out that the Passover of the Israelites 18. Tin- was in its origin a similar sacrifice. A lamb or kid, the first-fruit of the flocks, was eaten entire without the bones being broken, the blood smeared on the doorway being an offering to the god. The story connecting this sacrifice with the death of the first-born in Egypt was of later origin, devised to account for it when the real meaning had been forgotten. 1 The name Rachel 2 means a ewe, and it would appear that the children of Israel in the pastoral stage had the sheep for their totem deity and supposed themselves to be descended from it, as the Jats consider themselves to be descended from Siva, probably in his form of Mahadeo, the deified bull.

As held in Canaan, the festival may have been a relic of the former migratory life of the Israelites when they tended flocks and regarded the sheep, or goat, as their most important domestic animal. It may have been in memory of this wandering life that the festival was accom- panied by the eating of unleavened bread, and the sacrifice was consumed with loins girded up and staffs in their hands, as if in readiness for a journey. The Banjaras retain in their marriage and other customs various reminiscences of their former migratory life, as shown in the article on that caste. The Gadarias of the Central Provinces worship a goddess called Dishai Devi, who is represented by a stone platform just outside the sheep-pen. She has thus probably developed from the deified sheep or goat, which itself was formerly worshipped.

On the eighth day of the fasts in Chait and Kunwar the Gadarias offer the goddess a virgin she-goat. They wash the goat's feet in water and rub turmeric on its feet and head. It is given rice to eat and brought before the goddess, and water is poured over its body ; when the goat begins to shiver they think that the goddess has accepted the offering, and cut its throat with a sickle or knife. Then the animal is roasted whole and eaten in the veranda of the house, nothing being thrown away but the bones. Only men may join in this sacrifice, and not women. 1 In following the explanation of the lamb was a substitute for the previous Passover given by Professor Robertson sacrifice by the Israelites of their first- Smith and M. Reinach, it is necessary born sons. with great diffidence to dissent from the 2 Orph&ts, p. 272; Religion of the hypothesis of Sir J. G. Frazer that the Semites, p. 31 1. 364 KASAI 19. Sanc- tity of domestic animals. Thus it was a more or less general rule among several races that the domestic animals were deified and held sacred, and were slain only at a sacrifice. It followed that it was sinful to kill these animals on any other occasion. It has already been seen that the Arabs forbore to kill their worn-out camels for food except when driven to it by hunger as a last resort. " That it was once a capital offence to kill an ox, both in Attica and the Peloponnesus, is attested by Varro.

So far as Athens is concerned, this statement seems to be drawn from the legend that was told in connection with the annual sacrifice at the Diipolia, where the victim was a bull and its death was followed by a solemn inquiry as to who was responsible for the act. In this trial every- one who had anything to do with the slaughter was called as a party ; the maidens who drew water to sharpen the axe and knife threw the blame on the sharpeners, they put it on the man who handed the axe, he on the man who struck down the victim, and he again on the one who cut its throat, who finally fixed the responsibility on the knife, which was accordingly found guilty of murder and cast into the sea." x "

At Tenedos the priest who offered a bull-calf to Dionysus antJiroporraistes was attacked with stones and had to flee for his life ; and at Corinth, in the annual sacrifice of a goat to Hera Acraea, care was taken to shift the responsibility of the death off the shoulders of the community by employing hirelings as ministers. Even they did no more than hide the knife in such a way that the goat, scraping with its feet, procured its own death." 2 " Agatharchides, describing the Troglodytes of East Africa, a primitive pastoral people in the polyandrous state of society, tells us that their whole sustenance was derived from their flocks and herds.

When pasture abounded, after the rainy season, they lived on milk mingled with blood (drawn apparently, as in Arabia, from the living animal), and in the dry season they had recourse to the flesh of aged or weakly beasts. Further, ' they gave the name of parent to no human being, but only to the ox and cow, the ram and ewe, from whom they had their nourishment' Among' the Caffres the cattle kraal is sacred ; women may not enter it, and to defile it is a 1 Religion of the Semites, p. 304. - Ibidem, pp. 305, 306. ii SACRIFICIAL SLAUGHTER FOR FOOD 365 capital offence." ] Among the Egyptians also cows were never killed. 2 Gradually, however, as the reverence for animals declined 20. Sacri- and the true level of their intelligence compared to that of swhter man came to be better appreciated, the sanctity attaching to for food. their lives no doubt grew weaker. Then it would become permissible to kill a domestic animal privately and otherwise than by a joint sacrifice of the clan ; but the old custom of justifying the slaughter by offering it to the god would still remain. " At this stage,3 at least among the Hebrews, the original sanctity of the life of domestic animals is still recog- nised in a modified form, inasmuch as it is held unlawful to use their flesh for food except in a sacrificial meal. But this rule is not strict enough to prevent flesh from becoming a familiar luxury.

Sacrifices are multiplied on trivial occa- sions of religious gladness or social festivity, and the rite of eating at the sanctuary loses the character of an exceptional sacrament, and means no more than that men are invited to feast and be merry at the table of their god, or that no feast is complete in which the god has not his share." 4 This is the stage reached by the Hebrews in the time of Samuel, as described by Professor Robertson Smith, and it bears much resemblance to that of the lower Hindu castes and the Gonds at the present time.

They too, when they can afford to kill a goat or a pig, cows being prohibited in deference to Hindu susceptibility, take it to the shrine of some village deity and offer it there prior to feasting on it with their friends. At intervals of a year or more many of the lower castes sacrifice a goat to Dulha Deo, the bridegroom-god, and Thakur Deo, the corn-god, and eat the body as a sacrificial meal within the house, burying the bones and other remnants beneath the floor of the house.

5 Among the Kafirs of the Hindu Kush, when a man wishes to become a Jast, apparently a revered elder or senator, he must give a series of feasts to the whole community, so expensive that many men utterly ruin themselves in becoming Jast. The initiatory pro- ceedings are sacrifices of bulls and male goats to Glsh, the 1 Religion of the Semites, pp. 296, 3 When the blood of the animal was 297. poured out before the god as his share. 4 Religion of the Semites, p. 246. 2 Golden Bough, ii. p. 313. 5 Vide article on Dhanwar.

war-god, at the village shrine. The animals are examined with jealous eyes by the spectators, to see that they come up to the prescribed standard of excellence. After the sacrifice the meat is divided among the people, who carry it to their homes. These special sacrifices at the shrine recur at intervals ; but the great slaughterings are at the feast-giver's own house, where he entertains sometimes the Jast exclu- sively and sometimes the whole tribe, as already mentioned.1 Even in the latter case, however, after a big distribution at the giver's house one or two goats are offered to the war-god at his shrine ; and while the animals are being killed at the house offerings are made on a sacrificial fire, and as each soat is slain a handful of its blood is taken and thrown on the fire. 2 The Kafirs would therefore appear to be in the stage when it is still usual to kill domestic animals as a sacrifice to the god, but no longer obligatory. 21.

Animal Finally animals are recognised for what they are, all fights ' sanctity ceases to attach to them, and they are killed for food in an ordinary manner. Possibly, however, such customs as roasting an ox whole, and the sports of bull-baiting and bull- fighting, may be relics of the ancient sacrifice. Formerly the buffaloes sacrificed at the shrine of the goddess Rankini or Kali in Dalbhum zamlndari of Chota Nagpur were made to fight. " Two male buffaloes are driven into a small en- closure and on a raised stage adjoining and overlooking it the Raja and his suite take up their position. After some ceremonies the Raja and his family priest discharge arrows at the buffaloes, others follow their example, and the tormented and enraged beasts fall to and gore each other whilst arrow after arrow is discharged.

When the animals are past doing very much mischief, the people rush in and hack at them with battle-axes till they are dead." 3 22. The Muhammadans however cannot eat the flesh of an animal methocTof un l ess its throat is cut and the blood allowed to flow before killing. it dies. At the time of cutting the throat a sacred text or invocation must be repeated. It has been seen that in former times the blood of the animal was offered to the god and scattered on the altar or collected in a pit at its 1 Sir G. Robertson, Kafirs of the 2 Ibidem, p. 460. Hindu Kush, pp. 450, 451. 3 ~Da\\ox\, Ethnology ofBengal, p. 1^6. ii THE SACRIFICIAL METHOD OF KILLING 367 foot. It may be suggested that the method of killing which still survives was that formerly practised in offering the sacrifice, and that the necessity of allowing the blood to flow is a relic of the blood offering. When it no longer became necessary to sacrifice every animal at a shrine the sacrificial method of slaughter and the invocation to the god might be retained as removing the impiety of the act.

At present it is said that unless an animal's blood flows it is a murda or corpse, and hence not suitable for food. But this idea may have grown up to account for the custom when its original meaning had been forgotten. The Gonds, when sacrificing a fowl, hold it over the sacred post or stone, which represents the god, and let the blood drop upon it. And when sacrific- ing a pig they first cut its tongue and let the blood fall upon the symbol of the god. In Chhattisgarh, when a Hindu is ill he makes a vow of the affected limb to the god ; then on recovering he goes to the temple, and cutting this limb, lets the blood fall on to the symbol of the god as an offering.

Similarly the Sikhs are forbidden to eat flesh unless the animal has been killed by jatka or cutting off the head with one stroke, and the same rule is observed by some of the lower Hindu castes. In Hindu sacrifices it is often custom- ary that the head of the animal should be made over to the officiating priest as his share, and so in killing the animal he would naturally cut off its head. The above rule may there- fore be of the same character as the rite of Jialal anions the Muhammadans, and here also the sacrificial method of killing an animal may be retained to legalise its slaughter after the sacrifice itself has fallen into desuetude.

In Berar some time ago the Mullah or Muhammadan priest was a village servant and the Hindus paid him dues. In return he was accustomed to kill the goats and sheep which they wished to sacrifice at temples, or in their fields to propitiate the deities presiding over them. He also killed animals for the Khatlk or mutton-butcher and the latter exposed them for sale.

The Mullah was entitled to the heart of the animal killed as his perquisite and a fee of two pice. Some of the Marathas were unmindful of the ceremony, but in general they professed not to eat flesh unless the sacred verse had been pronounced either by the Mullah or some Muhammadan 368 KASAI part capable of rendering it haltxl or lawful to be eaten.1 Hence it would appear that the Hindus, unprovided by their own religion with any sacrificial mode of legalising the slaughter of animals, adopted the ritual of a foreign faith in order to make animal sacrifices acceptable to their own deities.

The belief that it is sinful to kill a domestic animal except with some religious sanction is thus clearly shown in full force. 23. Animal Among high-caste Hindus also sacrifices, including the sacrifices killing of cows, were at one time legal. This is shown by in Indian ° „ ,...- „ r ritual. several legends," and is also a historical fact. One of Asoka's royal edicts prohibited at the capital the celebration of animal sacrifices and merry-makings involving the use of meat, but in the provinces apparently they continued to be lawful. 3 This indicates that prior to the rise of Buddhism such sacrifices had been customary, and also that when a feast was to be given, involving the consumption of meat, the animal was offered as a sacrifice. It is noteworthy that Asoka's rules do not forbid the slaughter of cows.4 In ancient times also the most important royal sacrifice was that of the horse. The development of religious belief and practice in connection with the killing of domestic animals has thus proceeded on exactly opposite lines in India as compared with most of the world. Domestic animals have become more instead of less sacred and several of them cannot be killed at all.

The reason usually given to account for this is the belief in the transmigration of souls, leading to the conclusion that the bodies of animals might be tenanted by human souls. Probably also Buddhism left powerful traces of its influence on the Hindu view of the 1 Grant-Duff, History of the Mara- refused to eat animals not killed by thas, vol. i. p. 27. Mr. Hlra Lai halal ; they must in that case have notes that owing to the predominance attached some religious significance or of Muhammadans in Berar the practice virtue to the rite, and the most probable of slaughtering all animals by the significance is perhaps that stated in method of halal and the regular em- the text. As Mr. Hlra Lai points out, ployment of the Mullah to pronounce the Hindu sacred books provide an the sacred text before slaughter may elaborate ritual for the sacrifice of have grown up for their convenience. animals, but this may have fallen into And, as in other instances, the Hindus abeyance with the decline in the custom may have simply imitated the Muham- of eating meat, madans in regarding this method of 2 Vide article on Mochi. slaughter as necessary. This however scarcely seems to impair the force of

• V- A< Smith > Asoka, p. 56.

the argument if the Hindus actually * Ibidem, p. 58. ii KASAR 369 sanctity of animal life even after it had ceased to be the state religion. Perhaps the Brahmans desired to make their faith more popular and took advantage of the favourite reverence of all cultivators for the cow to exalt her into one of their most powerful deities, and at the same time to extend the local cult of Krishna, the divine cowherd, thus following exactly the contrary course to that taken by Moses with the golden calf.

Generally the growth of political and national feeling has mainly operated to limit the influence of the priesthood, and the spread of education and development of reasoned criti- cism and discussion have softened the strictness of religious observance and ritual. Both these factors have been almost entirely wanting in Hindu society, and this perhaps explains the continued sanctity attaching to the lives of domestic animals as well as the unabated power of the caste system.

Notes

Muhammad butchers are subdivided into Bakri-Kasai, or goat killers, and Goru-Kasai, or cow killers. The latter were formerly regarded as a degraded race, but of late years the two classes have united and freely intermarry. They are all followers of Maulavi Karamat 'Ali, and are very bigoted, eating with the Kuti, but refusing to sit down with the sweeper, Kichak, or Bediya. Their only title is Mihtar; and their headman, or Sardar, has under him a Naib or A'min.

Before slaughtering an animal the butcher repeats three times "Bismillah Allah Akbar," and, if uttered with proper reverence, he is exonerated from the guilt of shedding blood. The Kasai will not skin an animal which has died from natural causes, this he leaves to the Rishi; and in inland villages he trades in skins, there being little demand for animal food. In towns they cure skins, and sell them to the Chamra-farosh; fat they clean and give to the soap-makers; horn to the comb-makers; and sinews (parhi) to the Rishi and Dhuniya for strings of musical instruments and carding machines.

The female members of Kasai families not being allowed out of doors are famous needle women, and earn money by embroidering muslin.